P-Mac's Health Woes

No, he's not ill, nor are his children. But he's a victim of DarthDoyle's bullheaded inanity:

But because I live in the only state where the governor has vetoed a deduction for HSA contributions, I’ll be paying $91 more in state income taxes. It’s not a huge sum, but it is more than a fortnight’s worth of health insurance premiums, oddly enough, and I’m paying it because Doyle says doing what most of the rest of the country does just benefits “the wealthy.”

In that, he’s wrong, of course. The insurance industry’s stats say about half the people buying HSA plans last year had incomes under $50,000. And since there are limits on how much you can put into an HSA -- $5,250 last year – the deduction’s value is limited, too. It’s just a smaller proportion of income to the wealthy, even given their higher tax rates, than it is to middle-income taxpayers.

So why does the governor take this line? Because health savings accounts are part of a trend that Democrats generally, and their union backers in particular, seem to dislike: away from some big, coordinated system where your health care is paid by someone else.

This strikes home, as I'm aware of a very large (and unionized) local employer who won't establish an HSA 'because our workers don't have any spare money.'

One reason they don't is because they're paying DarthDoyle too much...duuuhhhhh.